


no ghosts

by aryaofoldstones



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Present Tense, implied Bran Stark/Meera Reed, the Riverlands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 04:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21130883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryaofoldstones/pseuds/aryaofoldstones
Summary: “Mother,” Gendry calls, their child perched on his chest, voice sing-song.





	no ghosts

There are no ghosts here.

She watches Gendry through the window. He pulls their daughter onto his chest, straightening her crown of flowers with the tip of one calloused finger. Had they chose differently, she might have worn a true crown and lived in a castle. And suffered for it.

Instead she rules a little house, and both her parent’s hearts.

Little Ginny had been both a wish come true and a surprise. They had been recently married and trying for a child in earnest, though Arya feared that her lack of moonblood meant it was not to be, when they consulted a wise woman in a village.

She had listened seriously as they spoke to her of their troubles and then laughed until tears sprung to her eyes

“I’ve seen the growing of a babe pull the sense from a mother’s mind, but rarely have I seen their effect extend to the father as well!”

Someday there will be more, once Arya and Gendry feel brave enough. For now, they are three — and inseparable.

“Mother,” Gendry calls, voice sing-song.

Ginny joins in the beckoning, babbling Mother Mother Mother, and Arya abandons her watch at the window to join her family in the garden. 

Gendry curves his spine, titling his head back to look at Arya upside down as she approaches. His blue eyes are filled with so much love, so soft, and she sees the boy in him.

She thinks back to laying side by side with him in the grass, his hand on her rounded belly, searching the stars for a name for their babe.

“Is there a name you find pretty?”

“Arya,” Gendry offered, drawing her hand to his lips.

They are wealthy, despite their humble lives. Twice a year a sum arrives, one from the north and one from the south. Though they both chafe at the knowledge that it is a pittance to their royal highnesses, they are grateful for it, and grateful for all the good they can do with the far too ample purses.

She loves her siblings, truly, and knows they love her. Bran is a good king, and his letters have warmed since he wed his queen, and every smiling face Arya sees in the village is a reminder of his dedication to rebuilding and reform, and resources for the least fortunate amongst them.

Sansa writes half as much as Bran, and though her hand and words are as pretty as they’ve always been Arya can sense the unease behind them. The little news she does hear of the north is troubling, no one in Westeros is willing to do trade with the prideful kingdom and there have been riots in Winterfell’s courtyard over the lack of fresh crops, and after a while she closes her ears to all of it to protect her heart.

Though she writes to Jon at least twice a moon’s turn, she never receives a reply.

Her uncle Edmure had offered them a home in Riverrun, and then a cottage in the castle’s shadow when they had refused that. In the end they chose to make their home at the fork of the Blackwater Rush, close enough for Edmure to dote on Ginny and only a day’s ride from Acorn Hall.

Lady Smallwood had wept the first time she opened her door to Gendry and Arya, older and in love and golden with happiness, and drew them into her mother’s arms. Her presence during Ginny’s difficult birth had saved Arya’s life.

Gendry thinks of Ravella as a kind of goddess now, and speaks of her with such reverence that Arya would almost be jealous if she hadn’t overhead his sobs in the Godswood as he thanked the Old Gods, and the New, and Ravella, Ravella, Ravella for protecting Arya’s life.

Arya presses a kiss to Gendry’s nose, and then Ginny’s before laying in the grass with her head cuddled against her husband’s.

“We were spotting swords in the clouds.”

“You were? Ginny, precious girl, what did you see in the clouds?”

“Mutter, Mutter, Mudder,” she says, gnawing on one chubby fist.

If Jon Snow ever goes back to Castle Black, Arya knows he won’t make it past the very first line in the very first letter she wrote to him during the early days of her pregnancy, before he sets off on his journey south to them.

It hurts her heart that her favorite brother will never know her first as a squalling babe or a babbling child. 

Someday, there will be more, she knows in her bones, and Jon, too.

For now though, her little family is enough for her bad heart.

“I love you.” Gendry presses a kiss to her cheek. Arya plucks a flower and tucks it behind Gendry’s ear.

“I love you. And I love you.” She twists a raven colored curl around her fingertip.

“Mother, Mother, Mother.”


End file.
